Follow Your Vote Matters on Twitter @YourVote_UK for daily facts on voting running up to and including election day Thursday 8 June. If you are still undecided about the candidates and their political parties take a look at Easy News‘s special General Election Manifesto Special Edition for June. You can download it from their website. We have a copy on display in the Learning Resources Centre.

You may be wondering why we’ve not added ones for the Conservative Party and the UK Independence Party (UKIP). This is because none are yet available. Mencap is urging these parties to produce them on their website page General Election 2017 Easy Read Manifestos. They’ve also brought all the easy read ones together on the same page. We’ll update the post when ones become available.

The General Election is on 8 June. Our students on the Step Up to Functional Skills and Interviews course have been discussing this in class. As a result we’ve come up with some handy sources to help you vote in the election.

We also get the weekly newspaper First News which makes the news easier to understand. They are running a reader mock general election. Take a look at their General Election page for an easy read on what the different parties stand for.

Register to vote on the UK Government website. You will need your national insurance number. You can also register by post with this form if you live in England/Wales. You need to register by 1159am on Monday 22 May. You can download this form to register for a vote by post if you are away from home on election day. Your Vote Matters website has a handy search engine so you can find your local authority to register to vote in person or send them a form to get a postal vote.

As a college Hillcroft aims to reflect the diverse background of its learners and staff. Our Access to Higher Education: Humanities and Social Science students look at identity as part of their Psychology and Sociology units. If you’re interested in diversity and equality then you’ll like the Turner Prize winning artist Grayson Perry’s exhibition Who Are You? running until 15 March 2014 at the National Portrait Gallery in London.

The exhibition follows the 14 items in the exhibition which appeared in the Channel 4 programme Grayson Perry: Who Are You? broadcast this autumn. They include a poster representing the identity and beliefs of a deaf community group, a Benin-styled statue of Peter Pan depicting a female to male transsexual and a young British woman from Kent who has converted to Islam encapsulated in a silk Hijab. Plus 3 statues of women from a women’s group which supports so called obese women. One of Perry’s signature ceramic pots portrays a gay couple who have adopted a mixed race child. You can follow Grayson’s trail of works at the National Portrait Gallery.

If you’d like to find out more about the artwork go through backruns of the TV programme by visiting 4oD.

At the same time the National Portrait Gallery is displaying Suffragettes: Deeds Not Words examining how the suffragette movement spent the summer of 1914 increasing their fight for the vote and protesting against the Cat and Mouse Act up. The display runs up to 10 May 2015.